<
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/archie-the-internets-first-search-engine-is-rescued-and-running/>
'It's amazing, and a little sad, to think that something created in 1989 that
changed how people used and viewed the then-nascent Internet had nearly
vanished by 2024.
Nearly, that is, because the dogged researchers and enthusiasts at
The Serial
Port channel on YouTube have found what is likely the last existing copy of
Archie. Archie, first crafted by Alan Emtage while a student at McGill
University in Montreal, Quebec, allowed for the searching of various
"anonymous" FTP servers around what was then a very small web of universities,
researchers, and government and military nodes. It was groundbreaking; it was
the first echo of the "anything, anywhere" Internet to come. And when
The
Serial Port went looking, it very much did not exist.
While Archie would eventually be supplanted by Gopher, web portals, and search
engines, it remains a useful way to index FTP sites and certainly should be
preserved.
The Serial Port did this, and the road to get there is remarkable
and intriguing. You are best off watching the video of their rescue, along with
its explanatory preamble. But I present here some notable bits of the tale,
perhaps to tempt you into digging further.
The Serial Port notes the general loss of the Internet's FTP era, including
the recent shutdown of the Hobbes OS/2 Archive. Emtage, interviewed at length
by the team, sent a tape copy of Archie to the Computer History Museum in
Mountain View, California, but it was unrecoverable. Emtage's company, Bunyip
Information Systems, last sold version 3.5 of Archie's server software for
$6,000 in the mid-1990s (almost $12,000 today), and yet you can't find it
anywhere on the web. The Internet Archive wasn't really running until 1996,
just as Archie was fading from the web and, likely, memory.
The Serial Port team works dozens and dozens of resources to find a working
copy of Archie's code, including the Internet Old Farts Club on Facebook. I
won't give away the surprising source of their victory, but cheers (or
na
zdrowie) to the folks who keep old things running for everyone's knowledge.'
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
